Dearest Readers,My name is adorkable, and I am a news junkie. But even I, an admitted addict, can’t keep up with the constant stream of news that’s thrown at me from all directions. Follow us on twitter, find us on facebook, get our text updates, let us stalk you while you’re sleeping and infiltrate your dreams. Woooooah. Here’s the problem in the age of more more more … we have too many choices and no one distilling it for us. We have too little time to filter and too much information.
The strange thing is, I am a journalist, you would think that I of all people would want the news to flourish with all its beautiful powers. However, I too, wish I could find someone to say here are the top 5 news stories of the day from a myriad of news sources, covering a litany of topics. (please take a moment to be impressed by my vocabulary…moving on) Even I feel overwhelmed by journalism, and I’m a journalist! The real issue is we’re getting an information overload from the information super highway.
As you’re handy dandy helper, I can tell you what I have found that helps out at least moderately:
• Watch the BBC’s one minute world news report – (If you click the link it is right at the top of the news page on sort of the rightish side) The top stories of the day literally in a minute. For those of you who are unfamiliar, BBC, a UK based journalistic source, it is hailed for its international coverage. Rating: 9 out of 10.
• Create a Google Reader - For the best explanation of a google reader click here. My explanation would be, all you do is use your e-mail to set up your own aggregator...it doesn't even have to be a gmail account. An aggregator collects news from all over the web and delivers it to you (How kind of it)…so basically you pick your top news sites (for me BBC, New York Times, and the Christian Science Monitor) and every day it gives me the headlines and a one sentence description of each story. Problem: It doesn’t prioritize the stories, so basically you scroll through a gajillion headlines and don’t know which is most important. Tip: look at the stories “liked” by other people. Rating: 7 out of 10.
• Sign up for text updates from one news source – Text updates allow you to get only the big stories. The problem is that the news source decides the stories. Mine come from the NYTimes, which is great except that I don’t really want to hear about the DOW or all that business mumbo-jumbo, but the texts do help when there is a huge event or natural disaster. Rating: 8 out of 10.
The problem with even my above helpful hints, is that all of them are what the news source thinks we want to hear. What I think news sources need to do is allow the readers to check boxes of what they want updates on: politics, economics, sports, etc, and deliver these to you the reader. News sources need to learn to filter.
Lesson to be learned: It is possible to find the top news stories of the day, but sometimes it’s as simple as picking up a newspaper. Because sometimes the internet is just too much … and my brain starts to hurt.
Overloadly yours,
Adorkable
No comments:
Post a Comment